![]() ![]() It’s giving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) read-outs of the current state of space weather, which when severe can cause problems for astronauts, satellites and electricity grids. However, it’s worth remembering that the DSCOVR satellite this spent rocket part came from is doing incredible science. Attaching the term “space junk” and Elon Musk’s name instantly make it a big and negative story. There seems to be a swell of doubt around whether the carbon footprints of rocket launches can be justified in this age of rampant climate change. Why we need to launch rockets and satellites ![]() “It’s time for the world to get more serious about regulating and cataloging deep space activity,” writes McDowell. However, with the age of commercial space industry there’s going to be a lot more junk like this. “This is ‘none of the space agencies care about leaving stuff out beyond the Moon’.” “This is not ‘SpaceX did something bad’-it’s perfectly standard practice to abandon stuff in deep orbit,” writes McDowell. He says that it’s mainly because no one has been paying attention to the 30 to 50 lost deep space objects until Bill Gray, who spotted 2015-007B. “This is the first time that something not explicitly targeted at the Moon has been noticed to accidentally hit it.” ![]() “We know lots of junk from lunar missions has ended up hitting the Moon, for example upper stages from lunar missions and junk left in lunar orbit,” writes astronomer Jonathan McDowell on his website. However, that’s not the case with the SpaceX rocket. In short, lunar impacts so far have been done for science. Ranger 7 sent back a whopping 4,316 images of the Moon (and left a large crater) while Ranger 8 returned more than 7,000 images and Ranger 9 live TV pictures. NASA eventually-after a few misses-intentionally crashed some of its Ranger spacecraft into the Moon in 1964 so it could send back images of the lunar surface just before impact. It’s certainly not the first time it’s happened. should we be outraged by this unnecessary littering/destruction of the Moon’s pristine environment with “space junk?” NASA’s Ranger missions However, it’s possible that the impact and/or the crater it causes could be snapped by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and/or India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter.īut hang on. No, that’s not going to be possible-at least, not from Earth-because it will actually crash into the far side of the Moon, specifically near a carter called Hertzsprung. NASA/Lunar and Planetary Institute Can you watch the SpaceX rocket stage hit the Moon? This image is from NASA's Lunar Orbiter 5. Hertzsprung is an enormous lunar impact crater, or impact basin, that is located on the far side of. ![]()
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